The Witcher series has sold more than 4 million copies across its two main series titles, according to CD Projekt RED. The combined sales of The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings have hit the healthy number across the PC, Mac, and Xbox 360.

That number doesn't include the iOS applications like The Witcher: Versus or the interactive comic for Witcher 2. Those numbers will be increasing by a bit soon. The Mac version of the second game is due out in the fall, and the Xbox 360 version will be released in Japan on August 23.

"I'm still amazed with the result we have achieved with The Witcher franchise," said studio head Adam Badowski, in the announcement. "Many gamers on many platforms have been drawn to the vivid and complex world we have created. In the gaming world summer means a lot of great, hot deals. So if you still don't own the game look out for both retail and digital special offers."

The giveaway coincides with CD Projekt's Spring Conference, which is being streamed live at 5pm GMT (presumably 6pm BST).

Note that giveaway has nothing to do with the "extraordinary" conference announcement CD Projekt has been teasing.

CD Projekt Red head of marketing Michal Platkow-Gilewski explained to Eurogamer: "No, there will be no announcement of a new game.

"But to give you some hints and not to spoil the surprise, CD Projekt RED and GOG.com have prepared something very special for all the PC fans of The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings, who already have the game, as well as for all those who will buy one any time in the future.

"It is something really unique," he added.

"More to come on the conference."

A free copy of The Witcher 1? What has CD Projekt got up its deer-hide sleeve?

Of those copies, 270,000 were sold via digital distribution platforms: 40,000 on GOG.com, which leaves the lion's share of the remainder presumably to Steam (numbers not disclosed).

But most "remarkable" to CDPR managing director Adam Badowski, was that 401,543 copies of The Witcher 1 were sold last year.

"I have to admit, though, that the sales results for The Witcher, five years on from the game's premier, are remarkable," he commented.

"If anything, they prove that the content we put into our games ages well.

"The Witcher will continue to generate buzz in the coming years."

Eurogamer recently cornered Adam Badowski for a lengthy chat. He and marketing manager Michal Platkow-Gilewski revealed that CD Projekt Red was already working towards the next generation of consoles. On those machines will be the developer's next two major new games: one a new IP, the other The Witcher 3. They'll arrive simultaneously for PC and next-generation consoles in 2014/15. Witcher those games will arrive when, and Witcher the platforms they'll be on, were questions that couldn't be answered.

Consider that the new IP is being built by a team that's only just being put together, though, and it's likely that project will take longer to make.

The next two major titles from Polish developer CD Projekt Red, scheduled for 2014/15, will be simultaneous multi-platform releases for PC and next-generation consoles, detective Eurogamer has discovered.

"We are definitely starting for new consoles," managing director Adam Badowski told us, when asked whether the pair of known-about "AAA+" games will be for this generation or the next.

"The market is ready for something new," heralded head of marketing Michal Platkow-Gilewski, "for something faster, more powerful."

Badowski added: "I can tell you we are and we were focusing on powerful gaming rigs. We're going to do something amazing, so we need extra processors.

"It will be multi-platform game, so the multi-release at the same time. But if you are talking about leading platform, we will use most powerful, just because it can give us the freedom of creation.

When does CD Projekt Red begin making an engine for the next generation of machines?

"We've already started," Badowski revealed.

"We prepared a backlog for the new features quite a long time ago."

"You probably know that we've decided to develop our new engine that is called Red Engine, so we've prepared a long-term plan for that engine. So we are yes, yes we are developing some features just for the new..."

Platkow-Gilewski interjected: "We are anticipating what the new generations of consoles may be."

"The market is ready for something new, for something faster, more powerful."

Michal Platkow-Gilewski, head of marketing, CD Projekt Red

"Not only consoles," Badowski butted in.

"What the platforms will be," Platkow-Gilewski answered. "And what will happen in the PC market, because you know we have to create something better than we could achieve today. We have to see a little bit the future, like other developers I guess."

The specs CD Projekt Red are working towards for these next-generation consoles are "quite powerful but nothing extraordinary", shared Badowski. But this is "our - I hope - lucky guess", he added, inferring that CD Projekt Red does not have next-gen dev kits. Platkow-Gilewski confirmed that what will be in next-gen consoles, "we don't know this, today".

CD Projekt Red talked about two major new games in November. These were described at a conference as "AAA+" games, and are scheduled for 2014/2015. A "AAA+" game is "something huge and it's multi-platform", explained Platkow-Gilewski.

One of these is new IP.

CD Projekt is putting together a new team to make this game. The Witcher team won't be involved. "The second team is just a few guys right now," shared Badowski, "because we decided not to split the original Witcher team in two parts, but to hire new staff, and we've just started."

"The second project is during the early pre-production stage, so we don't need the huge team for that."

What will this new IP be? "We are staying in RPG," Badowski said.

"The whole scenario is quite simple: we're going to create almost exactly the same kind of team, and our policy is to create RPG games for mature audiences. But of course the second title will be different than the first one. We need to change universe and gameplay mechanics, but the game will be based on a deep scenario as [are] The Witcher games."

This new IP is "not at all" to do with FPS They, which acquired studio Metropolis Software was working on up until January 2010.

"[The new IP] will be a mature RPG and story-driven game. I cannot say in what universe - maybe high fantasy, maybe not."

Adam Badowski, managing director, CD Projekt Red

Will this new IP be a science-fiction game?

"I cannot say right now," deflected Badowski. "It will be a mature RPG and story-driven game. I cannot say in what universe - maybe high fantasy, maybe not."

What's the other AAA+ game being made by The Witcher team, then?

It has to be The Witcher 3 - please can you put us out of our misery and confirm it, we asked?

"Frankly speaking, not yet," Platkow-Gilewski replied. "Give us some time; I'm sure we will announce it pretty fast in the following months, but we want to do everything in the proper order. And right now we are focused on polishing and bringing the Enhanced Edition to Xbox 360 and PC."

"Especially as on Xbox 360 we don't have the first instalment of The Witcher. So we want to slowly enter the market, educate our gamers/customers - we don't want to [talk] too much about our future projects for now."

"There are rumours that The Witcher is a saga..." Badowski teased, and confirmed that both of the "AAA+" projects "are in pre-production stage". We weren't allowed to know which would be released first, in 2014.

CD Projekt Red revealed three other games at the November conference: two "A" games for 2012, and one "AA" game for 2013.

We'll know "pretty soon" about the first "A" game, which will be released Q1 2012. It's definitely not a mobile game - CDPR isn't going there - but we may have prodded a sensitive spot when we asked if it was anything to do with The Witcher 1.

"You are unpacking the gift, you know," Platkow-Gilewski told us. "Really soon we will inform the community about our surprise. It will come pretty soon, in the following two months."

Whether the second "A" game will be similar we will have to wait and see. That's coming later this year.

What exactly is an "A" game?

"Give us some time; I'm sure we will announce [The Witcher 3] pretty fast in the following months, but we want to do everything in the proper order. And right now we are focused on polishing and bringing the Enhanced Edition to Xbox 360 and PC."

Michal Platkow-Gilewski

"The definition of product A is that this is a good quality game for a single platform which doesn't involve enormous effort on our side," Platkow-Gilewski explained. "This is our internal definition. After the first surprise, maybe we'll reveal some information about the second surprise for this year."

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings - Enhanced Edition on Xbox 360 and PC is classified as "AAA". No plus. This is "something big, or huge, but for a single platform", Platkow-Gilewski clarified.

"AA" titles are "big games with good scores" of 85 per cent or higher on Metacritic, we were told. "They have some selling potential, but they don't require more than two years of our work," said Platkow-Gilewski.

(Note that while the Xbox 360 version of The Witcher 2 took one year, that period was converting an already made game, not creating one from scratch - which is presumably what Platkow-Gilewski means.)

This "AA" game sounds like an expansion pack for The Witcher 2. Is it?

"Let's release the game first and we will see," answered Platkow-Gilewski gingerly.

"The thing is, we have to measure our capabilities, and we have big plans for the future."

GOG.com is set to take on Valve's Steam and EA's Origin with the addition of newer games to the service.

The DRM-free distributor wants to be the second largest independent digital games seller on the internet.

It will continue to add classic games, for which it is known, but will pursue newer titles for 2012 and 2013. It wants to sign exclusive releases with certain developers, it said.

"Traditionally, GOG.com has looked for great classics that are three years old or older," Guillaume Rambourg managing director said.

"We will continue to add classic games, of course, but we are actively working to sign newer titles now. Of course, these new titles will have to come at a new, higher price point, but our key focus will always be on the same core values that have made GOG.com great so far: completely DRM-free games, flat prices everywhere in the world, and extra content and goodies for our fantastic customers."

Rambourg said over 400 games will be on GOG.com by the end of 2012.

"Finally, we want to work closely with ambitious developers and independent publishers who feel a kinship with that 'good old spirit' that GOG.com embodies," he continued. "Thanks to the commercial success of The Witcher 2 on GOG.com, more and more people realize that our values are universal.

"They are coming to GOG and asking if we can carry their titles. We've made GOG.com the destination for classic PC games, but now is the time to take this to the next level and emerge as the best alternative digital distribution platform for all PC games."

PC players may have quenched their thirst for witching quite a while ago, but Xbox 360 players still have yet to witch at all. But take heart, aspiring console witchers. Warner Bros. Interactive announced today that it will handle the publishing duties for the 360 version of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings in North America, due early next year.

Warner Bros is adopting a critical hit, but the game comes with its share of baggage. Developer CD Projekt Red is being sued by Namco Bandai over publishing rights in Europe. Namco Bandai published the PC version in the territory, but CD Projekt Red's decision to hand European console publishing to THQ rubbed Namco the wrong way.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

One of the given reasons behind the delay to 2012 was to have extra time to sort out the legal entanglements. To further complicate matters, Atari had PC publishing rights in North America, but as evidenced by today's announcement, had no say on the console version.

"We are very pleased to partner with CD Projekt RED to bring 'The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings' to consoles in the United States, Canada and Mexico," said WBIE senior VP of sales Kevin Kebodeaux in the announcement. "Witcher is a AAA franchise that fits well with our strategic distribution of high quality games, making it a great addition to our 2012 line-up in North America."

CD Projekt Red president Adam KiciÅski claims that the Xbox 360 version will include "significant enhancements," and the RED Engine will make it "one of the best looking games ever released on Xbox 360." The company previously announced the enhancements will include extra story, improvements from the 2.0 version, Dark Mode, Arena, a new tutorial, and a four minute opening cinematic. The downloadable content that PC users are getting for free, though, will cost extra on Xbox 360.

PC players may have quenched their thirst for witching quite a while ago, but Xbox 360 players still have yet to witch at all. But take heart, aspiring console witchers. Warner Bros. Interactive announced today that it will handle the publishing duties for the 360 version of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings in North America, due early next year.

Warner Bros is adopting a critical hit, but the game comes with its share of baggage. Developer CD Projekt Red is being sued by Namco Bandai over publishing rights in Europe. Namco Bandai published the PC version in the territory, but CD Projekt Red's decision to hand European console publishing to THQ rubbed Namco the wrong way.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

One of the given reasons behind the delay to 2012 was to have extra time to sort out the legal entanglements. To further complicate matters, Atari had PC publishing rights in North America, but as evidenced by today's announcement, had no say on the console version.

"We are very pleased to partner with CD Projekt RED to bring 'The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings' to consoles in the United States, Canada and Mexico," said WBIE senior VP of sales Kevin Kebodeaux in the announcement. "Witcher is a AAA franchise that fits well with our strategic distribution of high quality games, making it a great addition to our 2012 line-up in North America."

CD Projekt Red president Adam KiciÅski claims that the Xbox 360 version will include "significant enhancements," and the RED Engine will make it "one of the best looking games ever released on Xbox 360." The company previously announced the enhancements will include extra story, improvements from the 2.0 version, Dark Mode, Arena, a new tutorial, and a four minute opening cinematic. The downloadable content that PC users are getting for free, though, will cost extra on Xbox 360.

With the release of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings fast approaching, Good Old Games--the sibling of developer of CD Projekt RED--is having a fun day of Witcher-related merriment. Along with beginning pre-loading and launching a DRM-free $5 version of the original, it's made a small technical tweak which, surely by coincidence, will help Australians dodge the sequel's censorship.

The most interesting bit of Witcher action today is the one which initially seems entirely unrelated--GOG announced that it will no longer use IP addresses to determine where a user 'is.' This will supposedly help those who are abroad when they make a purchase or whose location is determined incorrectly by the Geo-IP database, as well as respecting user privacy by not tracking un-needed data.

The Witcher 2, and the original

"We only need to know the country that you're making this purchase from, so although we originally planned to use geo-IP to determine user's location, we've decided to trust our users and let them inform us as to the correct region for their purchase," GOG said in the announcement.

Handily, as Rock, Paper, Shotgun pointed out, this will also allow Australians to acquire the uncensored version of The Witcher 2, simply by lying about where they are. GOG all but confirmed this on Twitter, saying that "We think RPS has figured it out." Surely that's only an unfortunate side-effect, though, which no government or law could rightly contend.

The Australian version of The Witcher 2 has been censored, thanks to the country's absurd refusal to create an 'adults only' rating for video games. The censorship is very slight, with only one scene changed--rather than being able to choose for Geralt to engage in sexual relations with a lady as a quest reward, the White Wolf is instead forced to give her one. Still, it's the principle of the thing.

Should you happen to be in Australia right now--say, on a business trip to secure a large order of kangaroo scrotum coin purses for your novelty gift shop which is definitely not in Australia--make sure that your GOG profile accurately reflects the non-Australian country in which you dwell, or you won't receive the true version of The Witcher 2.

In more conventionally exciting news, today also saw the promised DRM-free GOG release of the original The Witcher, the original. It launched at $4.99, thanks to a 50% discount that'll be offered until May 24.

Meanwhile, The Witcher 2 will begin preloading on GOG today through its fancy new download. Only the GOG version is DRM-free, with SecuROM being used in all other editions. The game is set to launch on May 17.

Those sex cards, eh? I was determined to collect as many of them as I could. If that meant going out of my way to safely escort a barmaid home late at night, so be it. Convincing a dryad that sex is not just for procreation, that it's fun and can relieve stress? No problem. I couldn't help myself. It was like sexy Pokémon.

The Witcher's anthropological commentary on humans' slavish obedience to their base, animalistic instincts, to the detriment of the greater good, was intelligent and incisive. Or at least it would have been if that's what the sex cards represented. Realistically though, they were purely for titillation.

Irrespective of the heavy-handed way developer CD Projekt RED implemented erotica in The Witcher (a concept the studio didn't so much flirt with as take it to an abandoned mill and indelicately shag senseless), its inclusion was representative of the core elements of characterisation that run through a game influenced by the short stories of Andrzej Sapkowsk, which tell of the infamous Geralt of Rivia, the 'White Wolf', a monster-slaying mercenary known as a 'Witcher'.

The game plumbs the ethos of these short stories to add definition and weight to the world and its characters. These are people with histories. Some share a personal history with Geralt, though none are probed in too much detail. Nor are you beaten over the head with endless conversation trees, because the developer attempts to shoehorn the origins of each relationship into the tale of the amnesiac White Wolf.

The amnesia mechanic is a little unfortunate  a clumsy way to explain why it is that you play Geralt as a 'level 1' Witcher rather than the famed monster-slayer that everyone else seems to know him as. It's especially clumsy as much of Geralt's skill progression is based on combat prowess that you imagine would be so ingrained in him as to be second nature.

The stripping away of abilities and powers is the eternal conundrum for games that tell you you're a fully-formed powerhouse but still need to leave room for progression. CD Projekt RED wisely chooses not to make too much of a song and dance of it. You're Geralt of Rivia, you have amnesia for a reason that is never fully explained. Now get on with it.

Being assigned the role of Geralt, amnesiac or not, enables some smart narrative twists based on the choices you make guided by Geralt's ambiguous moral compass. You are not some abandoned child or lowly commoner destined for great things, one who starts with a blank slate to be written and a forehead size, degree of overbite and hair colour decided upon by random tugs on a sliding scale. Here you play Geralt of Rivia, Witcher, professional monster-slayer, gambler, womaniser, drinker and, frankly, a bit of a hard nut.

He also has his bad points. He doesn't seem to know how to stand naturally during a conversation, for one thing. Despite CD Projekt RED's love for its first game being plain to see in other areas, you sometimes have to squint and turn your head sideways to see past the ugly. The dark fantasy art direction is sufficiently bleak, gothic and full of character and, granted, Geralt's movement in combat is fluid enough, with cuts, thrusts and balletic twirls to reward the well-timed mouse clicks that facilitate the combo system. But during conversation the characters appear beholden to an incompetent puppet master.

The 'Enhanced Edition', released almost a year after the original, went some way toward rectifying this, introducing extra animations and NPC models alongside other welcome touches such as an overhaul of the inventory system to separate and sort the numerous alchemy ingredients. The developers also made a significant gesture of removing digital rights management altogether, resulting in no install limits and no disk check. Furthermore, it packaged all of the extras up as a free download for those who had already bought the game.

On returning to the game now, it's the stories within stories that impress most. Those narrative mini-arcs that show the game's tagline to be more than idle boast: "There is no good, no evil  Only decisions and consequences." There's the expected branching storyline, but with very little of the blatant good vs. evil choices that are so clearly signposted in other RPGs. As long as you choose the path that is best suited to how you're playing Geralt, rather than that which you estimate will net you the most loot, you're never made to feel that you've made 'wrong' choice.

Consequences play out as mini cut-scenes in the style of hand-painted storyboards, with Geralt providing a voiceover explaining that the events of right now are transpiring because of the decision that you made, in some cases, several hours previously (there's no quick-loading in order to pick the other choice).

The decision that stuck with me most came on my first playthrough. Having journeyed to an out-of-the-way swamp and completed several of the local quests, I had to choose one side in a conflict: the rebel force or the authoritarian soldiers. Neither side is explicitly good or evil, and you can see the point of view of both.

The rebels are made up of the non-human races (elves, dwarves and the like) and are victims of racism. They've been forced from their homes to live on the edge of poverty. With barely enough food and water for their families, they have taken to obtaining these things by force, which in some cases has led to innocent humans being caught up in the fighting between them and the authorities. You can see the persecution and, in most cases, it would be simple enough to side with them to fight against the 'evil' empire that imposes such oppression.

Except that here the empire isn't evil, and nor is it even your enemy. From the soldier's point of view, the rebels are effectively terrorists and it's not them forcing the suppression on non-humans, but society as a whole. Though the authorities are doing nothing to redress the balance, their interest is in keeping the peace and stopping any further attacks by the rebels.

So do you lead the imperial unit to the rebel camp to rout them completely, or do you lead the rebels in a pre-emptive ambush on the imperial guards camped in the forest? I felt that as a Witcher I should remain impartial and not get involved in the politics, so I continued to go about my business, determined not to help either, although it seemed that neither would attack the other until I acted and both would be stuck in their respective camps for game-time eternity. Eventually I left the swamplands, willing to leave that particular branch of the story unresolved, such was my feeling for remaining true to the neutrality of the Witcher ethos.

But it did resolve. Despite what seems like a two-choice scenario, CD Projekt RED built in an invisible third choice: do nothing, as I had. This choice comes with its own outcomes and pretty storyboards further down the line, and you're chided for your neutrality; reminded that it has its own consequences. Had I created my own character, I likely would have chosen one side over the other, but with The Witcher I felt it was my duty not to choose, because that was what a Witcher would do.

The Witcher's legacy to me is that it encouraged me to play an actual role, rather than flesh out a cipher with a range of canned goods and evils. It illustrated that game developers needn't rely on reward or punishment to make us care about the choices we make: provide compelling narrative, not shiny trinkets, as the preeminent consequence of our decisions and that will be enough. We'll even forgive you the sex cards.